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Lapse   /læps/   Listen
Lapse

noun
1.
A mistake resulting from inattention.  Synonym: oversight.
2.
A break or intermission in the occurrence of something.
3.
A failure to maintain a higher state.  Synonyms: backsliding, lapsing, relapse, relapsing, reversion, reverting.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lapse" Quotes from Famous Books



... who has taken the degree of bachelor—never mind after how many plucks—and has reached the standing which is required of a master. The bestowing of two degrees is a mere make-believe; the higher degree proves nothing, beyond mere lapse of time, which is not equally proved by ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... at Rothamsted," said I, "and I feel a peculiar interest in looking over the results after such a lapse of time. When this crop was growing, my father, a good practical farmer, but with little faith in chemical manures, paid me a visit. We went to the experimental wheat-field. The first two plots, 0 and 1, had been dressed, the one with superphosphate, the other with potash, soda, ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... or animal killed by a hawk can be found, a good plan is to allow it to remain, surrounding it also with concealed traps, as they usually return to finish their meal, and that sometimes after the lapse of days. ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... while all Florence that had any care for the Graces was murmuring these verses, and wondering who it was that wrote them, and why it was that he wrote. It seems to me strange now, looking back on all these matters through the lapse of years, and through a mist of sad and happy memories, that I was not wise enough to guess at once who the man must be that made these miraculous stanzas. I can only plead in my own excuse that I did not live a generation ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... myself might go; and Mrs. Nettlepoint was waiting for her to go so that I mightn't. This doubtless made the young lady's absence appear to us longer than it really was—it was probably very brief. Her mother moreover, I think, had now a vague lapse from ease. Jasper Nettlepoint presently returned to the back drawing-room to serve his companion with our lucent syrup, and he took occasion to remark that it was lovely on the balcony: one really got some air, the ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James

... destroy those who were so unfortunate as to become the objects of royal or ministerial enmity. The king, if he could not make the law, could still appoint the judges of the law; and the right of interpretation was hardly less powerful than the power of legislation. Even when, after a lapse of time, the judges became in a great measure independent of the crown, still it was not until many years later, when the voice of an outraged people became more terrible to them than the frowns of kings or ministers, that those accused of political offence could hope ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... itself are inherited, and certain of them with remarkable persistence. There are instances in which the slight malformation consisting in an excess of fingers or toes has persisted through many generations. It may occasionally lapse in a generation to reappear later. In certain cases, notably in the bleeders, the inheritance is transmitted by the female alone, in other cases by the sexes equally, but there are no cases of transmission by the male ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... got. It is no reflection on Dundee's manhood that he was cast down during those days at Inverness, for a ten times more buoyant man would have lost heart. His life was a romantic drama, and it seemed as if the Fates had constructed it for the stage, for now, after the lapse of years, MacKay, his old rival in Holland, reappears, and they resume the duel, which this time is to be unto death. While Dundee was struggling in Edinburgh to save the throne for James, MacKay was on his way with regiments of the Scots Brigade ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... the lapse of time while contemplating the glorious panorama spread beneath. Just around us the ground was rocky and volcanic, and covered with mosses of various colors; rather lower down the ground was hidden by the fallen leaves of giant trees; beyond was a succession of smaller crests, frequently ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... years after the above words were written, the estimate expressed in them of Stevenson's qualities as a writer, and of the place he seemed likely to maintain in the affections of English readers all the world over, had been amply confirmed by the lapse of time. The sale of his works kept increasing rather than diminishing. Editions kept multiplying. A new generation of readers had found life and letters, nature and human nature, touched by him at so many points with so vivifying and illuminating a charm that it had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... possibly throw some light on the existence and career of Tell have now been thoroughly searched by many impartial and competent scholars, as well as by enthusiastic partisans, with the invariable result that, till a considerable lapse of years after the presumed date of their deaths, not one particle of evidence has been discovered tending to prove the identity of either William Tell or of the tyrant Gessler. On the other hand, many local authorities, as early as the beginning of the fifteenth and sixteenth ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... in the adjoining room which roused her from the heavy stupor into which she had fallen, for it could hardly be called a natural sleep, and she started up to look round as if feeling guilty of some lapse ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn

... attack Viollet-le-Duc, then all-powerful. He reproached him with trying to reestablish buildings in their primitive plan, as they had been, or as they might have been, at the beginning. Philippe Dechartre, on the contrary, wished that everything which the lapse of centuries had added to a church, an abbey, or a castle should be respected. To abolish anachronisms and restore a building to its primitive unity, seemed to him to be a scientific barbarity as culpable as that of ignorance. He ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... As I never permitted myself to regret this abstinence, I experienced no sort of inconvenience from it. I wrote nothing but occasional magazine articles during pastime, find as I never wrote one except under strong impulse, I observed no lapse of facility. But by and by I sat down with a contract behind me to write a book of five or six hundred pages—the book called "Roughing it"— and then I found myself most seriously obstructed. I was three weeks writing six chapters. Then I gave up the fight, resumed my three ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade

... he have been so thoughtless because of a little lapse in Central's mechanism? Now that it was denied him, probably forever, he saw more clearly the essential perfection of the system that had brought order into the chaos following the discovery of universal paraNormal ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner

... the prerogatives and functions of his office. The case of death, or of expulsion, which is, in fact, masonic death, is different, because all the rights possessed during life cease ex necessitate rei, and forever lapse at the time of the said physical or masonic death; and in the latter case, a restoration to all the rights and privileges of Masonry would not restore the party to any office which he had held at the time ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... lapse of 22 years, the "Meistersinger" was at last completed. He now strove to secure as far as possible a model representation. It was of course to take place in Munich, where "Tristan" had already given the orchestra at least a sure tradition of style. The event was destined ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... at the idea. Months of toil and pain and travail had not been enough to make him forget the strange girl he had loved. But he had remembered only at poignant intervals, and the lapse of time had made thought of her a dream like that sad dream which had lured him into the desert. With the query of the trader came a ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... again as to a case of coolness unparalleled—though indeed with a quick lapse of real interest in the question of whether he had been artfully practised upon; an indifference to bad debts or peculation like that of some huge hotel or other business involving a margin for waste. He could afford, he could work waste too, clearly—and what was it, that term, ...
— The Outcry • Henry James

... their aides were fighting unfriendly neighbors and quarrelsome princes, and when after the lapse of time the Thirty Years' War finally turned Germany into a field of blood, the Great Elector emerged from the strife with the support of about 25,000 well drilled soldiers, and freed his ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... such artistic power as is displayed on the walls of tombs of the same date, or in the statues found in them, as other than the outcome of a vast accumulation of experience, the attainment of which must imply the lapse of very long periods of time since the nation which produced such works emerged from barbarism. It is natural, where so remote an antiquity is in question, that we should feel a great difficulty, if not an impossibility, ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... having had their characters thus definitely shown, proceed to live up to them in every particular. From start to finish it is the virtuous Ben—his generosity, thrift, and foresight are never allowed to lapse for an instant—who triumphs in every episode. He saves his string, "good whipcord," when requested by Mr. Gresham to untie a parcel, and it thereafter serves to spin a fine new top, to help Hal out of a difficulty with his toy, and in the final incident of the story, an archery ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... planted areas after a lapse of from 10 to 15 years indicated that the sites still support only a scant herbaceous cover, with broomsedge and povertygrass predominating, and with no evidence of native woody species encroaching on the areas. The few surviving Asiatic chestnut seedlings were sickly looking, multi-stemmed, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... know." Sandy read a line with greedy interest. "She took the 'leven-twenty," he added then. Another mental lapse. "You seen her to ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... be understood as being brought about not suddenly, but slowly and gradually, seeing that the process of amendment and correction will take place imperceptibly in the individual instances, during the lapse of countless and unmeasured ages, some outstripping others, and tending by a swifter course towards perfection, while others, again, follow close at hand, and some, again, a long ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... most honourable: That it has always been, and still is my design to make her my Wife: And that I trust, when you consider these circumstances, our youth, and our attachment, you will not only forgive our momentary lapse from virtue, but will aid me in repairing my faults to Agnes, and securing a lawful title to ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... confidence in the virtue that is sublimely good at another's expense." What shall we answer to such criticism? Upon what ground can we read the play from beginning to end, and doubt the angel-purity of Isabella, or contemplate her possible lapse from virtue? Such gratuitous mistrust is here a sin against the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... Lapse of Time between Cretaceous and Eocene Periods. Table of successive Cretaceous Formations. Maestricht Beds. Pisolitic Limestone of France. Chalk of Faxoe. Geographical Extent and Origin of the White Chalk. Chalky Matter ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... state that the primitive condition of the earth was extremely damp. With the onward march of time, and after the lapse of millions of years, men found that they could get along with less and less water, until at last we see the pleasant, blissful state of things. Aside from the use of water at our summer resorts, that fluid is getting to be less ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... case of the South Dakota Divorcee the former alternative would seem to be the course followed, for up to date the animal has shown itself to be quite too resourceful to lapse into ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr

... back to the drinking-place. Then they found another charred brand, and another; and now, quite happy in the assurance that they were passing back over ground that they had already traversed, they pressed forward light-heartedly enough until, after the lapse of nearly another half-hour, Lethbridge again damped ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... lapse of a certain time things got very bad. Rejected and heartbroken, she began to waste away, and her eye grew haggard, but she put a restraint upon herself, no one knew her secret! 'What,' she would say to herself,' I cannot attract his notice for ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... door dropped his hands, and fell abjectedly silent, as servilely abashed in his lapse of etiquette as though he ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... speech, for the tone in which it had been uttered was rich in interrogation, as though its author, while realizing the pony's dimness of perception, half believed the animal had noticed Miss Radford's lapse ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer

... going to be boss in the married state, because the money and position was with them. And James had reached the point when he saw himself married in another six months, after he'd done the autumn work on his farm and could afford three days' holiday. He reckoned such a lapse would be largely waste of time, for money-making was his god; but a honeymoon appeared to be counted upon by Cora, and he'd yielded reluctantly in that particular. Then Mary Jane, she hoped to be wedded along with her brother, and counted on a very fine holiday with Nicholas ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... business, possessed herself of the high-held hand presented; but Johnnie only looked at it in astonishment, uncertain whether Miss Lydia meant to shake hands or pat her on the head. Yet when she did finally divine what was intended, the quality of her apologetic smile ought to have atoned for her lapse. ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... when the wind sings aloft on the ridges, the smoke mounts straight from its chimneys and the trees drip as steadily as though they were clocks and marked the seconds perfunctorily, with no real interest in the lapse of time. For the house, with its round-shouldered Jacobean gables, its stone-cropped roof, lichen-spotted plaster, and ill-kept yew hedge, has an air of resignation to decay, well-bred but spiritless, and communicates ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... fresher, and more original. As an English critic, writing pleasantly of him and his work, in the London Spectator said lately: "His books are delightful reading, with no monotony except a monotony of brilliance which an occasional lapse into dulness would ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... I walked round there, taking it for granted that Dick would be in, and that he had recognized me with certainty despite the lapse of time. I counted on his not giving me away to his employer, so I didn't hurry to pay my respects. And I hadn't trusted the old chap in vain. He was loyal to Caspian, so far as not betraying any instructions he may ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... acknowledged the gravity of the disclosure. But honestly he could not pretend to think it a thing which should alter or lessen the esteem or love in which Medland's friends held him. And even if the original act were seriously worthy of blame, the lapse of years made present severity as unreasonable as it would be unkind. In vain Medland reminded him that, let the act be as old and long past as it would, ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... when you have the opportunity.' It would be strange, indeed; it would be like fate; it would appear as though the thing were in the blood, and must come out, no matter what warning the man may have had before. You know, Natalie, what your husband had to endure for his former lapse?" ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... Chicago he had no thought save one. Some way, somehow, he must get to New York. Yet all the time he was fighting. He tried again and again to break away from the emotional associations from which his memory of her was erected; when that failed he struggled to face reality; the lapse of time, the certainty of his disappointment, at the best the inevitable parting when he went back to Norada. But always in the end he found his face turned toward the East, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the last element of the phenomenon of morality, the judgement of merit and demerit. The judgement follows, as the agent is supposed free, and it is not affected by lapse of time. It depends also essentially on the idea that the agent knows good from evil. Upon itself follow the notions of reward and punishment. Merit is the natural right to be rewarded; demerit, paradox as it may appear, is the right to be punished. A criminal would claim ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... could not see them move as they crawled across the span between the canyon's mouth. Interested, gripped in the contagion of the excitement round him, he kept his eyes upon the distant specks until the sun had changed to another angle. But even after this lapse of time, so distant were the horsemen, so wide the canyon's mouth, they had traveled only half-way across the span. Yet he continued to watch, wondering at the nervousness around him, conscious of steadily increasing heat upon him, ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... But lapse of time did not make it any easier for him to leave his dominions. In 1226 the Lombards, fearing that Frederick's success in the recovery of royal rights in the South was merely a prelude to his renewal of imperial claims in North Italy, revived the ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... do get it; for it is the general impression of the various scenes through which the expedition leads the travelers that is left upon the mind, not those accurate details of a single one of them which the lapse of a year might render inaccurate. It is to the credit of the work therefore than one gains from it little specific knowledge. In its place are the reflections both wise and witty upon life, upon the characters of the men that are met, upon the nature ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... everything that will remind her of it; and she must live quietly, where she will not have to make a continual effort to smile and talk to people three times a day. Being agreeable, polite, and good-tempered for fifteen years, without a single lapse, will send anybody into a decline. You 'll never go that way, my Polly! Now, pardon me, but how much ready money have ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... either; and one moment he was awake, feeling rather drowsy; the next he was gone—plunged deep down in one of those heavy, dreamless sleeps in which hours pass away like moments, and the awakened sleeper wonders at the lapse of time. ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... month passes by in which we do not hear of some defalcation, some lapse from integrity, by a man who, through many years of business life, had maintained an untarnished reputation. I have half a dozen such cases in my memory now, and I do not know what to make of them. When I see a character standing ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... NATURE OF HAIR.—The imperishable nature of hair arises from the combination of salt and metals in its composition. In old tombs and on mummies it has been found in a perfect state, after a lapse of over two thousand years. There are many curious accounts proving the indestructibility ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... being subject to the wretched vanity which makes objections and excuses—I pleased the ladies—the ladies spoke favorably of me to their husbands—and some of their husbands were persons of rank and influence. After no very long lapse of time, the result of this combination of circumstances declared itself. Monsieur Bonnefoy's lessons became the indirect means of starting me on a diplomatic career—and the diplomatic career made poor Ernest Medhurst, to his own unutterable astonishment, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... prevent their growing importance, and to serve their own interested purposes. For according to the system of policy the states shall adopt at this moment, they will stand or fall; and by their confirmation or lapse, it is yet to be decided, whether the revolution must ultimately be considered a blessing or a curse:—a blessing or a curse not to the present age alone, for with our fate will the destiny of unborn millions ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... enter the marriage state, and, although for some time reluctant, she was induced by her uncle Ethelwold, then king of East Anglia, to give her hand to Egfrid, son of Oswy, king of Northumberland, and she afterwards became queen by the accession of her husband to his father's kingdom. After the lapse of twelve years she gained the permission of her husband to withdraw from his court, and retired to the Abbey of Coldingham, where she took the veil; thence withdrew to Ely, and repaired the old church founded by ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous

... considered dissolved by the war, even if premiums have not been paid, but lapse at the date of the first annual premium falling due three months after the peace. Life insurance contracts may be restored by payments of accumulated premiums with interest, sums falling due on such contracts ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... "If young persons poison their bodies and corrupt their minds with vicious courses, no lapse of time, after a reform, is likely to restore them to physical soundness and the soul purity of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... signal victory for the Burgesses, but Ludwell, who had personal scores to settle with the Governor, did not let matters drop here. After the lapse of several months he appeared once more before the Committee with charges against Effingham of misgovernment and oppression.[1033] Referring to the quarrel over the Bill of Ports, in 1685, he accused him of ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... place, they would have taken up, had they real exigence; and that more frequently than in our waking hours; and hence the time appears longer to us: and I make no doubt, but the permitted time appears long to a man going to the gallows, as the fear of its quick lapse will make him ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... wondering how it was possible that David Verity could be her mother's brother. This coarse-mannered hog of a man, brother to the sweet-voiced, tender-hearted gentlewoman whose gracious wraith was left undimmed in the girl's memory by the lapse of years—it would be unbelievable if it were not true! He was so gross, so tubby, so manifestly over-fed, whereas her mother had ever been elegant and bien soignee. But he had shown kindness to her in his domineering way. He was not quite ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... seemed to be a man of keen and cunning ability, who studied and played upon the passions and weaknesses of his fellows, possibly for their good, but always as a magician might deal with the beings subject to his power. By what strange lapse did he thus naively lay himself ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... they controlled, and doing homage for them to the guests, a gate-keeper, a major-domo, a steward (worthy men who spent the rest of the week in semi-independence in their own domains, dined there by themselves like small shopkeepers, and might to-morrow lapse to the plebeian service of some successful doctor or industrial magnate), scrupulous in carrying out to the letter all the instructions that had been heaped upon them before they were allowed to don the brilliant livery which they wore only at long intervals, and in which they did not ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... and evokes the sympathies of her neighbors, as well it may. She finds a bitterness within her heart which it is difficult to sweeten into resignation. Why should the blow have singled her as its object? Then, with the lapse of the days, comes a change of the season, and the wonderful climatic effects on both mind and body accompanying them. She wanders into the woods, and the rustling of the leaves beneath her feet betrays her from her dead husband for the first time, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... most cases, after the death of their conquerors, lapsed again into their original condition, leaving no permanent results behind, the triumphs which Peter achieved were the commencement of a work of internal improvement and reform which is now, after the lapse of a century and a half since he commenced it, still going on. The work is, in fact, advancing at the present day with perhaps greater and more ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... be put upon these coincidences is this: that supposing Sun and Moon to start together from a Node they would, after the lapse of 6585 days and a fraction, be found again together very near the same Node. During the interval there would have been 223 New and Full Moons. The exact time required for 223 Lunations is such that ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... consoled for the change which he had observed in the character of the Duke by the remembrance of the embrace with which his Grace had greeted Lady Caroline. Never indeed did a process which has, through the lapse of so many ages, occasioned so much delight, produce more lively satisfaction than the kiss in question. Lord Fitz-pompey had given up his plan of managing the Duke after the family dinner which his nephew had the pleasure to join the first day ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... not know, however, that, at my time of life, and after a lapse of thirty years, I should have been roused to the arrangement of the papers which I have combined to form this narrative, had I not met with the work of Madame ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... goes!" He raised the little brown fruit—which did indeed somewhat resemble a bean—to his mouth and swallowed it. He found it quite tasteless, but the deed was no sooner done than he was startled by a curious buzzing in his ears and a momentary but peculiar lapse of memory. He sat and looked around him like a man who has been asleep and suddenly awakened in unfamiliar surroundings. Then the sound of his client's voice suddenly recalled him to himself. He started up and peered ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... everlasting watchfulness to keep himself out of temptation, and, dreading at any moment that lapse from strength which is apt to come to the strongest of us, had resolved to quit his place at court and go to New Spain at once. He had learned, upon inquiry, that a ship would sail from Bristol in about twenty days, and ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... feelings and aspirations of the actors. A young lady, for example, has been on a visit to aid and console a poor peasant-girl, whom, having been in deep affliction, she found unexpectedly relieved. Engrossed by her warm sympathy with her humble friend, she forgets the lapse of time. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... while, last night, I lay quite still, And, as he fancied, in the deep, Exhausted rest of my short sleep, I heard, or dream'd I heard him pray: 'Oh, Father, take her not away! Let not life's dear assurance lapse Into death's agonised "Perhaps," A hope without Thy promise, where Less than assurance is despair! Give me some sign, if go she must, That death's not worse than dust to dust, Not heaven, on whose oblivious shore Joy I may have, but her ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... these memorable conversations occurred after the lapse of nine years. We had met together in the old place, and sauntering out one bitterly cold December evening resumed the discussion, walking to and fro on the moonlit bank of the ice-bound river, until evening merged into night and ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... after night nursing the dying ones and writing novels the while,—so that there might be a decent roof for them to die under. Had she failed to write the novels, I do not know where the roof would have been found. It is now more that forty years ago, and looking back over so long a lapse of time I can tell the story, though it be the story of my own father and mother, of my own brother and sister, almost as coldly as I have often done some scene of intended pathos in fiction; but that scene was indeed full of pathos. I was then ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... belonging to the collector, burnt it in triumph, and patrolled the streets for a considerable time. The revenue officers fled for refuge, first to the Romney man of war, and afterwards to Castle William. After the lapse of some time, the governor moved the council to take into consideration some measure for restoring vigour and firmness to government. The council replied "that the disorders which happened were occasioned by the violent and unprecedented manner in which the sloop Liberty had ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... greatest in the power seen at work. In the other five, in the Elijah record,[88] the Elisha,[89] the Moabite's body at Elisha's grave,[90] Jairus' daughter,[91] and the widow's son at Nain,[92] there was no lapse ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... overseer, was well contented with his post. He enjoyed the confidence of his lord, and became independent. He married; and, after the lapse of a year, had the happiness to press a lovely child to his fond bosom. But the birth of the child cost him the life of her mother. Herbert promised to provide for the orphan, and maintained his word. My great-uncle was a bachelor, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... most were to elapse between the assembling of one Parliament and another, and, once met, it could not be prorogued or dissolved for five months. Laws could not be made nor taxes imposed but by its authority, and after the lapse of twenty days the statutes it passed became laws, even though the Protector's assent was refused to them. The new Constitution was undoubtedly popular; and the promise of a real Parliament in a few months covered the want of any legal character in the new rule. The ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... of course, serious faults. In particular, readers emancipated by lapse of time from the enslavement of the first enthusiasm, have quarrelled with the mawkishness and sentimentality of his pathos, and with the exaggeration of his studies of character. It has been said of him, as it has of Thackeray, ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... slightly hard curve in the corners of her mouth; a second character lurking around her—indefinite, vague, repelling—the subconscious self, that no artifice can hide—the sin and the shame of deeds unrepented. If there had been a time when he had loved her, its potence could not leap the lapse of years and overcome his repugnance for her kind, and he looked at her coldly, barring her progress with a hand, which caught her two and held them in a grip that made ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... trees the world had ever seen. My father did not live to see his words come true; but on his death-bed he bade me transplant them here, and to look after them with the greatest care, which I accordingly did. At last, after the lapse of five long years, I noticed some blossoms on the branches, and a few days later the most exquisite fruit ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang

... bedimm'd the soul, That oft have bid the joys it treasur'd fly, Now, like th' unruffled waves of Ocean, roll With gentle lapse—their only sound a sigh. ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... forgiven Grace for jilting him, and they were the best of friends; so when she suggested their going into the adjoining room, where it was pleasanter and she could play to him if he liked, he readily assented, and while listening to her lively conversation and fine playing, he forgot the lapse of time, and was surprised when Edith came to him with the news that it was ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... with which she disappeared astounded me, the more so, when, after the lapse of about a minute the platform whereon she had stepped rose again, and with a click returned to its place. Only then was I enabled to re-open the cavity. Apparently it worked automatically, and being balanced in some way, as soon as Liola ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... After the lapse of a few minutes, he was no longer blind. A little light fell through the man-hole through which he had descended, and his eyes became accustomed to this cavern. He began to distinguish something. The passage in which he had burrowed—no ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... sugar have been put in separate vessels, these made air-tight and exposed for a long time to a heat of as much as three hundred degrees of Fahrenheit, so as to be quite sure that all living germs were destroyed. Yet after the lapse of weeks in some cases and of months in others, living beings were developed in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... eleven sharp," said Frau Laemke dreamily, nodding her head at the same time and then drawing a deep breath as if she had climbed a high mountain. And then, overwhelmed by the pain and pleasure of a memory that was still so extremely vivid after the lapse of ten years, she called her daughter, her first-born, to come to her on this ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... low and peculiar whistle, and after the lapse of a few moments, repeated it. Instantly, the hall door was noiselessly opened by a person whom Frank recognized as Davis, the butler. The Dead Man beckoned the two others to follow him into the hall, which they did, and the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... of my Father's temporary lapse into indulgence that he made no effort to thwart my intimacy with these my new companions. He was in an unusually humane mood himself. His marriage was one proof of it; another was the composition at this time of the most picturesque, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... fashion he got on a Bayswater omnibus, and waited patiently for it to reach Poplar. Strange changes in the landscape, not to be accounted for by the mere lapse of time, led to explanations, and the conductor—a humane man, who said he had got an idiot boy at home—personally laid down the lines of his tour. Two hours later he stood in front of a small ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... schools, since the success of the river and the cricket-field were denied him. Not that Richard set any exaggerated value upon academic honours. Only two things are necessary—this at least was his code at that period—never to lapse from the instincts of high-breeding and honour, and to see just as much of life, of men and of affairs, as obedience to those instincts permits. Already the sense of proportion was strong in Richard, fed perhaps ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... empire on the golden borders of our southwestern frontier, and which is but a stepping-stone to further and unlimited conquests on this continent. It has desolated the fairest portions of our land, "until the wolf long since driven back by the march of civilization returns after the lapse of a hundred years ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... went to the coffers that stood against the wall behind it, and threw up the lid of one of them, and found therein a smock or two of her own, yellowed by the lapse of time, and her old grey coat, ragged as it was when last she wore it, and now somewhat moth-eaten withal; and she drew forth both smocks and coat and laid them on the settle. Then she opened another coffer, and therein were gay and gaudy gowns and gear of the witch's wear; but lying ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... a pledge given by our opponents to win the election of 1895, and after the lapse of thirteen years of toil and stress, the Liberal Party is able to take it up, and will implement it in an effective fashion. Now, is there one of all these subjects which does not command the support of Trade Unionists and responsible Labour leaders? The Government is fighting ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... A lapse of a few weeks ensued, during which I heard nothing further from my persecutor; when, one dark November evening—one of those peculiarly English evenings, full of fog and gloom, when the half-frozen sleet, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various

... may have been more, it may have been less; it is difficult to estimate the lapse of time under such trying circumstances—the fetish-man did his best to disconcert me; then, baffled once more, with a furious and threatening gesture he passed on to the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... each other. In the one is shown the result of long centuries of progressive Civilization and refinement, which have gradually converted the mere creature into the semblance of all that is elevated and grand; while the other, after the lapse of the same period, has not advanced one step in the career of improvement, 'Yet, after all,' quoth I to myself, 'insensible as he is to a thousand wants, and removed from harassing cares, may not the savage be the happier man of the two?' Such were the thoughts that arose in my mind as I gazed upon ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... to it, as a signal to any passing vessel, was set up; and the captain, with two of his men, set out to explore the island. They were gone for two days. On returning, they reported no inhabitants, but plenty of good game, if any way could be devised to take it. No vessel appearing, after the lapse of some twelve or fifteen days, the men set about building for us a more comfortable place of shelter. One of these men had been a carpenter, and as an axe and saw, and some few tools, had come ashore on pieces of the wreck, and in chests, he was enabled to put up a ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... moment, notwithstanding all my efforts, slumber might visit me. In order to give Bindloss full opportunity for carrying out his scheme, it was necessary for me to get into bed, and even to feign sleep. In my present exhausted condition the pretence of slumber would easily lapse into the reality. This risk, however, which really was a very grave one, must be run. Without undressing I got into bed, pulling the bed-clothes well over me. In my hand I held my revolver. I deliberately put out the candles, and then lay motionless, waiting for events. ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade

... Mid[-e]/wig[^a]n. With the assistance of the preceptor he arranges his gift of tobacco which he takes with him to the sacred inclosure, after which a smoke offering is made, and later Mid[-e]/ songs are chanted. These may be of his own composition as he has been a professor of magic a sufficient lapse of time to have composed them, but to give evidence of superior powers the chief, or some other of the officiating priests, will perhaps be sufficiently inspired to sing. The following was prepared and chanted by one of the Mid[-e]/ priests ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... After the lapse of a few minutes, a light appeared at the window of the lower room, and the door was ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... stepped up from the west porch to the altar, covered from neck to heels in a white sheet. Slanderers and evil speakers he clapped into the Peel, or perhaps the whipping-stocks, with tongue in a noose of leather, and when after a lapse of time the gag was removed the liberated tongue was obliged to denounce itself by saying thrice, clearly, boldly, probably with good accent and discretion, ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine

... whole. Reprimanded once, not for negligence, but for some foolish act unbecoming his position. Thorough acquaintance with the museum and its exhibits. A valuable man, well liked, notwithstanding the one lapse alluded to. At home and among his friends regarded as the best fellow going. A little free, perhaps, when unduly excited, but not given to drink and very fond of games. A member once of a club devoted to contests with foils and target-shooting. Always champion. Visits ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... becomes defiled, through lapse of time and the help of the bad memories of men. Jimmy Finn was not burned in the calaboose, but died a natural death in a tan vat, of a combination of delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion. When I say ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... have suddenly remembered his lapse of manners, for in the midst of his drinking spree he stopped short and stepped back as though to invite his comrade to take ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... Should I lapse into the easy-flowing style of the chroniclers of the period of which I write—(and how often has the scribe wished he could)—this chapter would open with the announcement that on this particularly bleak, wintry afternoon a gentleman in the equestrian ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... profanation, once driven out and returning, is deeper; for whereas, in the first instance, it had made the Temple 'a house of merchandise,' in the second it turned it into a 'den of robbers.' Thus evil assumes a darker tint, like old oak, by lapse of time, and swiftly becomes worse, if rebuked and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... small failure or mischance, perhaps early in the voyage; the sailors then began to reckon up ill omens, and to say that little good would come of this business. Further on, some serious misadventure happened which made them turn, or from the mere lapse of time they were obliged to bethink themselves of getting back. Safety, not renown or profit, now became their object; and then hope was at last out the negative of some fear. Thereupon, no doubt, ensued a good deal of recrimination amongst themselves, for very few people ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... chapters she must write, And pass my fiery test of dead Or living through the furnace-pit: Dislinked from who the softer hold In grip of brute, and brute remain: Of whom the woeful tale is told, How for one short Sultanic reign, Their bodies lapse to mould, Their souls ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... one passion, once have been happy—a rich Brazilian—who went away a year ago—my only lapse!—He went away to sell his estates, to realize his land, and come back to live in France. What will he find left of his Valerie? A dunghill. Well! it is his fault and not mine; why does he delay coming so long? Perhaps he ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... against my ribs, my bosom heaved, I gasped and panted for breath. "There is no end then," said I, "to my persecutors! My unwearied and long-continued labours lead to no termination! Termination! No; the lapse of time, that cures all other things, makes my case more desperate! Why then," exclaimed I, a new train of thought suddenly rushing into my mind, "why should I sustain the contest any longer? I can at least elude my persecutors in death. ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... SEA DEPOSITS. Remembering the vast amount of material denuded from the land and deposited offshore, we should expect that with the lapse of time sea deposits would have grown to an enormous thickness. It is a suggestive fact that, as a rule, the profile of the ocean bed is that of a soup plate,—a basin surrounded by a flaring rim. On the CONTINENTAL SHELF, as the rim ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... was fond of children, he became suddenly restive. He took out his watch, and was nervously surprised at the lapse of time. The carriage was sent for, and in a few minutes that dignified vehicle was bowling back ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... Should I lapse to what I was Ere we met; (Such can not be, but because Some forget Let me feign it)—none would notice That where she I know by rote is Spread a strange and withering change, Like a drying of ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... appearing as the final volume frontispiece, a photogravure of the painting that originally belonged to Franklin, which was taken from his home in Philadelphia during the British occupation, and after the lapse of 130 years was presented to the United States by Earl Gray. It was painted in London in 1759 by Benjamin Wilson, and is now in the White ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson



Words linked to "Lapse" :   forgo, throw overboard, slip away, waive, oversight, drop off, pause, relapsing, progress, slip, march on, finish, terminate, vanish, cease, suspension, break, failure, move on, go on, forfeit, fault, move, error, retrovert, advance, intermission, recidivism, fall away, revert, fell, mistake, turn back, stop, drop away, return, pass on, forego, interruption, fly, give up, end



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